Legacy of Battle

Adventure 4: Spider Webs

4

DEC/15

Neth the 14th witnessed a summons from Captain Feril by Guardsman Henricks to the Hall of Justice. The Captain recounts his findings regarding the mysteries around the Dunwiddy estate and that they were largely manufactured by the intruders, using the strange wooden cubes found in a few rooms. The surviving burglar, Tilly, has recovered and became more forthcoming in what she knows. She told the Captain that her contact in Lyrus works for Corin Turse and connected her and her brother to Spider. The Captain asks the adventurers to look into the Corin Turse connection and learn what they can from him about Spider.

Kraeg attempts to infiltrate Turse’s shipping house and organization by asking for a job as an enforcer. With two of Turse’s men, his right hand Briggs, orders them to pinch a local priest of Ryll for protection money, which they promptly do.

Tycho attempts to infiltrate the shipping house under the cover that he is seeking to hire Spider for a job. He discusses this with Briggs, but is unable to see Corin directly. When leaving, he slips into the warehouse proper and, while passing between isles to get closer to a ladder to the catwalk, he is spotted by men above him. A scuffle ensues and Tycho dives through Corin’s office window and then out another window to the street below, Briggs and the rest of Corin’s men right behind. Unfortunately, Tycho makes a hard landing and is rendered unconscious.

Sammy and Gamecock provide ample and unusual distraction in the form of religious zealots, priest and nun respectively, warning the workers and especially the guards around the Turse Shipping House, going so far as to ‘smite’ one of the naysayers with vengeful wrath of a most uncomfortable nature midst a flurry of carefully crafted flyers which spew forth from Sammy’s cloak.

Kraeg returns from his job in time to see Tycho crash through the outer window and hit the ground, rather unceremoniously. He rushes to him and when attempting to mislead the arriving guards, tips his hand to the already suspicious lot. Briggs arrives and engages Kraeg. Through a heated bout of traded blows, Kraeg is felled next to Tycho and they are taken inside the warehouse.

Sammy climbs the warehouse wall and after night falls, hangs down from the roof, smashes Corin’s bedroom window in, and as the man pokes his head out the ruined window to try to catch a glimpse of the person who broke it, Sammy pulls him through the window and down the two stories to the ground below, not 30’ from where Tycho lay earlier. Thrown on the back of Gamecock, Sammy runs off with his prize. In a nearby shed, he concocts a scheme to interrogate Corin, learn what he can of Spider and then exchange him for his brothers.

After their release and a short rest, a meeting with Captain Feril sends them to the Bee’s Bonnett with Guardsman Henricks. When let into the apartment above the bakery, they find Spider, dead, likely from poison, sitting at his table, next to a half finished note to Father Galdan about a woman named Melody and below it a hastily scrawled image of a runed stone, which Kraeg recognizes from an exploration ledger at the Dunwiddy estate, and the name ‘Ambrose’.

Returning again to Captain Feril, he is able to recover the ledger from the Dunwiddy estate and the entry Kraeg recalled with a sketch matching the one Spider left behind. It is a detail of an expedition returned earlier this year, some months ago. The drawing is of a stone shaped like an archway keystone, with small runes running the perimeter of the one face of the stone and a larger, central rune, accompanied by some descriptive text next to the rather careful illustration note it was found midst a well-sealed chamber deep beneath the ruins of a royal burial tomb. A sinkhole exposed the tomb and the chamber below. A small notation in a different hand on a slip of paper inserted in the ledger on that page reads simply, ‘Ambrose?’ A rough scale puts the stone at about 8” long. No other mention of the stone is made in the ledger.